ST3

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is small, but he's been successful when given the opportunity, unlike, say Funchess, who tallied -11 yards on his 2 carries. I understand not trying that again. I don't understand not giving the ball more to Norfleet.

He's not demonstrated an ability to be a downfield threat in the passing game, but I'll take a 7+ YPC average from the slot receiver/3rd down back. The problem is, no one was a downfield threat last season. Gardner needed to use his backs as outlets far more often than he did.

This line of discussion always reminds me of a great cartoon I saw many years ago. The maitre d' of a fine restaurant is on the phone taking a reservation and he asks the caller, "Is that an actual MD or just a PhD."

When my friend got his PhD, he changed all his magazine subscriptions to be addressed to Dr. Blah Blah. His reasoning was that he spent enough time getting the darn thing, he was going to make sure he took advantage of it. I liked that idea, but I only changed one subscription. Every week I'm reminded by SI that I'm Dr. ST3.

I was sitting on the goal line, about 15 rows up. I was an incoherent mess for a couple hours after the game, mumbling, "he tackled him in the endzone," over and over, wildly lashing out at random State fans we passed on the way from the stadium to Cottage Inn. It still hurts. That was a national championship caliber team.

I thought the rumor was that the whole team was smoking weed pre-game. That's the only way that outcome makes sense to me. Add in some of the rumors about the early-tourney losses in the Frieder era, and I'd say weed cost us a lot more than just one season of Mitch McGary.

this year's Super Bowl. NE was getting torched by that tall WR from Seattle, so NE adjusted and brought in that rookie FA from South Alabama. Meanwhile, Seattle's DB hurt something on the INT and was replaced. NE went after that guy for the rest of the game. That game was less than a month ago, yet I've already forgotten all of their names.

is when my sister told me her roommate shared a hot tub with Jim. This was about 30 years ago, so the details are fuzzy, but my sister's roommate was good looking in an, "East Quad hippy who grows marijuana in her room" kind of way.

they're not great options. I was thinking more about travel logistics. In basketball, it's common for schools to get paired up so you make a road trip to two geographically similar schools. You go play ASU on Thursday night and then Arizona on Saturday. That's the only thing I was getting at. Colorado St. has more panache - for lack of a better word - than Utah State, but both are sub Pac 12 standard. I'm not sure who BYU could pair up with. It seems like these things come in pairs due to scheduling headaches with odd numbers. Do any of these schools fit the bill:

Fresno St., UNLV, Gonzaga (no football, so no.), Nevada, Boise St.? It's really slim pickings unless the Pac wants to really expand their footprint with a Texas-like school, but I can't see the Longhorns moving west out of the conference they own to one where they would be treated as an equal.

I hope we finish strong and at least make the NIT. I didn't say anything in the CIT/CBA thread (or whatever those other tournaments are called). Part of me wishes they'd accept a bid if that's what it came to for the lower tourney just so Bielfeldt, Dakich, Lonergan, Chatman, and Donnal can get some more PT. College is fleeting, I'd want every opportunity I could get to suit up in the maize and blue if I was fortunate enough to be a player.

I'd love to see Max light up some lower-level club with 17 points like he did earlier in the year.

because they are BOTH the home team, playing in LA. That's not the case with M-OSU. I'm not sure what the reason would be for having both us and OSU wear home uniforms other than "it would look cool," and that's a road I don't want to travel down again. Maybe Michigan/MSU could pull off the double home jerseys idea because the schools are so close.

would be his greatest work. I'm not sure I'm willing to go that far, yet. But I do consider this an example of great writing. I so thoroughly identified with the intro where he writes about not having any friends as a kid because he does better than everyone else on tests. And then he contrasts his abillity to own up to his shortcomings and failures and learn from them and get better to Brandon's inability to learn. It's really well done.

I didn't find this fiery or bitter. It's more a re-telling of the facts. An historical narrative of recent events that lays blame on Brandon rationally and fairly. But thanks for teaching me a new word.

I noticed numerous times last night situations where if our defender had his hands up, he could have deflected or denied a pass or he would have had a better chance at getting a rebound. When you get tired, it's harder to keep the hands up on defense and MSU really exploited our - pardon the criticism of guys that are trying really hard and are in a bad situation - apparent lack of effort.

part of the problem with the bigs rebounding numbers is that they don't stay on the court long enough to tally any stats. Walton was playing ~33 MPG. Doyle's at 18. Bielfeldt and Donnal are at 13 and 12 MPG, respectively. It's really hard to get in the flow of a game when you are only playing in 3-4 minute stretches and don't know if you are going to get 25 minutes or 5. The rotation of the bigs has me vexed.

It's a trade-off. You either take Dakich's good ballhandling and ability to run the offense, with his lack of scoring, rebounding, and defense, or Dawkins/Irvin's lack of ballhandling with more size up front for rebounding and post defense. We got killed inside. And it's not like MSU is some super sized team. Schilling is 6' 9", Dawson is 6' 6" and Valentine is 6' 5". There's no reason we should have been dominated that badly. How about playing Donnal and Doyle together and force Izzo to put Valentine on one of those two, because Dawson was sticking with Irvin all night. There was a four minute stretch where Wollenman came in and we never went down to Doyle to attack that mismatch. It gets back to this team being so young that Beilein doesn't have time in practice to tweak things to attack the opponent's weakness, because he's still working so hard trying to get them to understand the basic concepts. Next year will be better.

I don't understand why Beilein rotates three players for one position, and then gives Dakich 8 minutes. In Dakich's 8 minutes, he had 1 PF and 1 missed shots. In Donnal's 9 minutes, he contributed 4 pts, 2 rebs and a block. In Bielfeldt's 9 minutes, he contributed 5 points and 6 rebounds. I understand that he didn't want to upset the rotations, but when it became apparent that Walton was going to be out for awhile, he has to move Irvin and or Dawkins down to the 2 position which isn't that much different than the 3 and figure out how to get 2 of Doyle/Bielfeldt/Donnal to play together.

I also don't understand how we let a 44% FT shooter have his way underneath. If you have 3 guys for one position (and I'd argue Chatman and Dawkins could have also guarded Dawson) foul trouble is not a problem. Hack him anytime he touches the ball. Do not let him have any space inside. Yet, we play gentlemanly basketball and let him go 10-12, while our three "bigs" only committed 6 fouls total. Guys, you had 15 fouls to give to the worst FT shooting team in the big 10. Schilling and Costello were a combined 8 for 8 and only shot 3 FTs.